The present invention relates to a reduced gain thrust control valve for use in high powered expander cycle rocket engines.
Existing thrust control valves used in rocket engines exhibit oscillatory characteristics at all operating conditions. Further, they exhibit non-repeatable control of turbine fixed bypass flow metering. Rocket engines utilizing the existing thrust control valves are subject to rejection because of high amplitude control oscillations and increased 1 E vibration levels, and inconsistent results from hardware changes intended to adjust the fixed turbine bypass flow rate.